Collette Calls: BABIP Surprises

Jason has been helping fantasy owners since 1999 at RotoJunkie, Fanball, Baseball Prospectus and now here at RotoWire. He covers the Tampa Bay Rays at theprocessreport.net. You can hear Jason weekly on many of the Sirius/XM Fantasy channel offerings throughout the season as well as on the Towers of Power Baseball Hour Podcast on iTunes. He was selected as the Fantasy Baseball Writer of the Year by FSWA in 2013.

As April ends, we are still faced with many statistical oddities this season. No player has more than 128 plate appearances and no pitchers has faced more than 177 batters. In terms of sample size, that gives us enough to stabilize the strikeout rates and walk rates of some pitchers, but everything else is up in the air. As a result, many of these oddities comprise the engine that is fueling some of the more surprising and disappointing starts to the 2014 season.

BABIP craziness

There are 750 players in the major leagues, I would have given you 749 guesses and you still would not have guessed the current leader in batting average on balls in play.

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